It was not what we were coming to

Original Language: español

Year of publication: 2021

Valoración: highly recommended

The truth is that one can be disoriented in the meantime short story book, a format that has been usual between a certain writer profile: young, launching career, scoring of various approaches, choice of that one in which one develops better (or is more appreciated by the public, perhaps). Among that Marasmo I have reached this collection of stories. A young author with a powerful alternative image and a varied multidisciplinary curriculum.

A profile that the Depouperated Editorial Industry of this country can lead to drafted instruction manuals, serve tables in a restaurant or decide, plunged into despair, try to oppose for some bland work. That this is not one of those Scandinavian countries, for example, where you try to protect creators. Luckily, although you always have to say “for the moment”, María Bastarós has found time to write some books, and This was not what we were coming It is one of them. And the average here is very remarkable, not forgetting that there is a certain current that cohesive the collection, as if we were opening windows from different some of a common scenario. And I love that this looks more like the remote Ray Pollock of Knockemstiff That Alice Munro, for example, that it is enough to be afraid of touching delicate issues, even disturbing, no longer because of the question of punching in the jaw, but because of the shameless and uninhibited daring that sometimes does not find its midpoint. That is not so easy: one can settle in a certain territory of cutting leftovers: urban, slightly past of thread in terms of addictions, murky issues, or passing on braking (the examples are piled up) and think that based on filling the outburst page, placing characters extracted from the audiovisual world and saying fuck y think y fuck All the time and already: I ​​am an alternative writer.

But not at all, moving in a geographically limited area, showing characters whose faces you can see on the bus, in the car next door at the traffic light, in the tail of the supermarket, Bastarós has drawn a fresco something hopeless about the relationships between people and their environments. And reluctant as I am to extract or highlight stories in particular, here I have not been able to resist: the twenty -one pages of Those who keep the firethe last and daring story of the collection, they are a real masterpiece, of those that, far from any accommodating claim, want to proper the kick exactly where it hurts the most.